Sneakily Expensive Drinks

It happens to all of us at one point or another; we order a drink without looking at the price and then find ourselves startled when the bill arrives.

That happened to me TWICE last week. The first time I was at Franklin & Company, a cute restaurant near our apartment that serves sandwiches and salads and a smoked chicken dish that comes with smashed potatoes and cauliflower. That dish, which I ordered, has a wine suggestion underneath it–a Pinot Noir–and so I told the waiter I’d do the dish with the pairing. No price was listed. When the bill came, that glass of Pinot Noir was $17. (The dish itself was $18.)

So yes, I’m to blame–I ordered a glass of wine without looking at the price first! (But: would it have hurt the restaurant to put the price on the main menu? Well, profitability-wise, it probably would have; customer satisfaction-wise, no.)

The wine, to their credit, was very good (it was a Demetria Pinot Noir, if you pay attention to such things).

So that happened, I moved on, life moved on, all was well.

Then on Saturday, we were in Echo Park and I was thirsty. We wandered into a place called KindKreme (what a name!) and I asked if they had a lemonade. The man behind the counter said, “Sure.”

I watched him pour a pulpy substance into a plastic cup from a pitcher. Then I watched him fill the rest of the cup up with water from a bottle. Here’s the lemonade with its lid and straw:

At the cash register, I took $2 out of my wallet ready to pay. “That’ll be $5.50.”

I think I laughed. Like: “Good one!”

But he wasn’t joking.

$5.50 for lemon pulp and water from a bottle? You’ve got to be kidding me.

If it was the best lemonade in the world, I’d still be slightly angry; but this wasn’t the best lemonade in the world. “Sweetened with agave,” according to the menu, this tasted just like lemon juice and water mixed together over ice. It probably cost KindKreme–which should change its name to KruelKreme–$0.25 in terms of ingredients. That’s a $5.25 profit.

I suppose, if this post has a lesson, it’s: pay attention to the price of things before you buy them?

Or: restaurants, don’t take advantage of your customers by hiding prices on menus or charging too much for something that costs you very little?

Or maybe this post doesn’t have a lesson. Maybe this post is just a place for me to rant about paying too much for drinks last week.